As a follow-up to an earlier post this week about "piggy bank philanthropy," the March 12, 2008, issue of the Boston Globe has an interesting article about an effort to educate middle and high school students about philanthropic ways in which they can help relieve world poverty. The article describes a program being organized by MicroLoan Foundation USA, a nonprofit that plans to recruit college students to teach middle and high school students about microlending - "a loan system for people in developing countries." Here is an excerpt from the article:

The program, which will be taught by volunteer college students in partnership with classroom teachers, is designed to show students that "just because they're in high school and half a world away doesn't mean they can't actually help someone in an impoverished community in rural Africa," said Lauren Galinsky, 20, a junior at Boston College who is recruiting schools and college students to participate in the project.

On the contrary, Galinsky added: Even small amounts of money raised by large numbers of students can have a powerful positive effect on the lives of disadvantaged people thousands of miles away.

Modeled after globally acclaimed microcredit organizations like Grameen Bank - which with its founder, Muhammad Yunus, won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize - the MicroLoan Foundation USA is a spinoff of the MicroLoan Foundation, a London-based organization founded in 2002 to provide microfinance services in Malawi, Zambia, and the Philippines. The Cambridge entity was created to bolster the organization's US fund-raising efforts, and to enable US donors to receive charitable tax deductions for their contributions, said David A. Rice, executive director of MicroLoan Foundation USA.